Screening & Live Event Flowers of Shanghai

Dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien. 1998, 113 mins. New 35mm print. With Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Michiko Hada, Carina Lau Ka-ling. Hou’s ravishing, lapidary chamber drama follows the fates of four “flower girls” working together in a brothel in the British section of Shanghai in 1884. Inside the sealed, illusory world of the flower house, fading Crimson fears losing the attention of Master Wang to Jasmin, while naïve Jade allows herself to be drawn into a suicide pact. “One of the most sublimely beautiful films I‘ve ever seen, and one of the most unbearably sad. To watch these characters break one another’s hearts, and then to have your own broken, is to experience something that the movies rarely grant us—perfection.” (Manohla Dargis, LA Weekly). Richard I. Suchenski, Director, Center for Moving Image Arts at Bard College, who organized the internationally touring retrospective, will introduce the screening.